– How to choose partners in starting a business– How to know if you are a true entrepreneur– How to get the most for your money out of legal services– How to deal with some of the challenges of being an entrepreneur.

The Hypothesis: If an individual will focus on one virtue each month for the next twelve months, they will experience greater achievements and a more fufilling life.

The Sample Group: a professional athlete, a school teacher, a president of a not-for-profit organization, a director of a production studio, a dental student, a law student, 2 young couples, a risk management specialist, and 3 stay-at-home mothers. (15 people total)

The Variables:

All fifteen individuals will be given a colored wristband (much like the yellow “live strong” wristband) to represent the virtue of the month.

Each individual will be expected to set a goal for that month dealing with that particular virtue.

Couples will share the goals with their spouses, siblings with siblings, and the single individuals will write their goals down and email them to me.

How the experiment will be monitored:

Each individual will be expected to report back at the end of the month, and share any unique experiences they enjoyed. Both positive and negative. With their permission, the stories of the test subjects will be shared on the site http://returntovirtues.com/

Those who fail to report back will receive a brief call and interview to evaluate the results of the month’s goal.

The results will be used to supplement my manuscript.

Let me know what you think of the experiment, I can be reached by email atdayon at gmail.com or on twitter. I reply to all comments.

To gain followers online you need people to like you. Here are the top reasons people will like you, your blog, your tweets, and your style.

1. Be Famous- everybody likes famous, so just do something truly exceptional and people will like you. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Lance Armstrong are great examples. Just put together a pattern of work in your life making you one of the foremost in your field in the history of the world, and I can pretty much guarantee people will like you. For 99.9% of the world, myself included, this technique will most likely be impossible. Not everyone can be famous, but everyone can be liked.

2. Be Interesting- check out guys like (I am using twitter names here) @mashable, @problogger, @guykawasaki, and @jowyang. These guys post interesting information on their blogs and twitter that is relevant and unique. You don’t have to post about social media like they do, but you do have to post information that is quality. That’s how the internet weeds out what is good and what is crap.

3. Be Nice- this could also include be respectful, be courteous, and be civilized. Language does matter. You drop the F-bomb on twitter or your blog and you will lose followers. I know what your thinking- “people that are offended by that kind of language aren’t the type of people I want to follow me anyway.” That’s fine, keep swearing like a sailor if its your thing- but people notice. Also, disagreement is in fact encouraged, just make sure it is respecful and never make it personal. Disagreeing sometimes starts the best discussions.

4. Be Complimentary- If you like a post, say so. If you like an article, share it. People will remember your kindness. It’s kind of the golden rule of the internet, do good to others and it will return to you. This is probably the easiest thing to do online to make you more liked.

5. Don’t Spend Too Much Time Self Promoting- The first rule of sales: People buy things from people they like. It is far more important to get people to like you, then to check out your site, your products, or your services. Once they like you they will check out your services out of curiosity. If they really like you they will tell others about your service. You want the connection to be personal, not product based.

Is you disagree, reply here, or I can be found @adriandayton on twitter.

I know you have been giving me a hard time for spending so much time on Twitter, so let me just say that I have proof that it is not a waste of time. Here are a few examples:

Today I met a guy on Twitter named @retireat21 – I don’t know anything about him in real life, but what if its true? What if there are all these people out there enjoying the four hour work week, flying first class, and getting paid to shop? Honey, that could be us! Sure I’m older than 21 now, but that should make it even easier. I also met someone named @easymoney – see Honey there is easy money to be made and all I have to do is join twitter and the money starts coming in. Right? Well maybe it isn’t that easy.

You have asked me in the past, who ever made it big just because of Twitter? How about our current President? Heard of him? During the final days leading up to the election 1-3 million twitter messages about him were exchanged pointing out the best articles, most accurate polls, and the latest messages coming directly out of his campaign. The Mccain camp couldn’t touch that type of real time news. Twitter may have turned the tide for Obama.

So in conclusion, I may never make any money on Twitter. People may never use Twitter to hire me as a corporate attorney, or to locate one more aspiring author, but believe me there are some of the most fascinating people on Twitter. I have been on for only one week, and I have learned a ton already. It’s so entertaining as well. There is nothing as exciting as someone re-tweeting your post, or asking a question that really gets people to buzz.

It’s a wonderful market of ideas. The good ones get passed on, and the bad ones are ignored. So give it a chance Honey, you might just find a way to work from home, make millions while drinking low-cal smoothies in bed, or even figure out a place to get free make-up. Imagine the possibilities!

For those of you who haven’t joined twitter, you seriously need to try it out- it is a blast. For those of you that are already using twitter here is a new pointer I got from twitter pro @mike_wesely

If you want to grow your following in your sleep (I know it sounds like a cheesey marketing pitch), here is what you have to do: find a few twitter stars- those with 10,000 plus followers that are in your target market- then late at night, say 11:00 or 12:00, right before you go to bed- tweet a good night message to each of these people. The message will likely stay on all night due to far less activity during these hours. Your @name will show up on their very popular blogs under their twitter feed for hours.

I tried this last night @posting to just three popular twitterers before I went to bed, and I awoke to over 30 new followers. Not exactly hundreds of followers, but it took me less than five minutes to send those posts. Imagine if I had sent tweets to all the top 20 twitter celebs? Try it out, and let me know how it goes for you.

According to the AP they have special training now just for killing pirates. What next? When will this anti-pirate media bias stop? I swear the media never publishes anything good the pirates do. We never hear about the schools they are building, pirate counsels they are holding, or advances in pirate seamanship. We always hear just the bad stuff.

And I can tell you from seeing multiple vaguely historical Pirates of the Caribbean movies that not all pirates are bad. Some pirates are cool, hip, funny, and/or hot. So next time someone starts telling another “pirate joke” or does another pirate impression (so tired). Just look him in the eye and say, not cool man…. not cool.

Here is an interesting article about learning new habits and breaking old habits. The idea discussed in the article of “half-habits” makes sense- but doesn’t seem like it would work in the real world. To learn a new behavior you need to be 100% committed. Tell me what you think. Here is the full article.

Here is the part I disagree with:

“Half Habits

The most common approach to forming a new habit is to attempt tocreate it with a single leap from your old way to the new way, without anytransition period. You smoke and you want to quit smoking. You drink coffee andyou want to cut it out of your diet. You don’t exercise and want to join the gymto exercise on a daily basis. To achieve your goals, you rely on commitment andwillpower.But as you have experienced time and time again, your willpowerwill dwindle a few weeks down the road (if you survive that long) and drag yourcommitment down with it, leaving you with your old ways… if not worse!

That’s because to go from one way to a totally new way is unnatural. It comes as ashock to your mind, body and soul and they will fight fiercely to return to away that is familiar to them.What’s the solution, I hear you ask?Well, that’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked it 🙂A solution I would recommend would be to go for half habits.

What does that mean?Rather than trying to commit FULLY to a new habit, you simply take a step in itsdirection. For example, instead of immediately joining a gym in order tobecome healthy, if your body has almost forgotten what “physical activity”means, incorporate a mini-exercise routine at home. That way, you don’t feelguilty that you’re not going to the gym every day, and you’re not takingsomething on that will be met with resistance. It’s a small adjustment that youwon’t have difficulty keeping up. An advantage to half habits is that youaccept that you need to go through a transition period from old habit to newhabit. You accept this as something natural and not a failing on yourpart.

In my life I am either excercising or NOT excercising. It doesn’t make sense to start half-excercising. It seems like more of an excuse.

I like this part though, it makes a lot of sense.

“Timeless Habits

One of the major obstacles we face in trying to adopt new habits intoour lives is simply that we don’t have the time to do so!If you want to start exercising, you need to fit exercise sessions into your schedule. But thatinvolves some planning, and you might already have too many commitments thatstop you from squeezing in exercise into your busy week.

But that doesn’t mean you cannot develop new and positive habits!Not having the time is no reason to remain stagnant. There are many small adjustments and changes we can do here and there that require no extra time whatsoever!Do you need any extra time to replace coffee with green tea, or soft drinks with water?Do you need any extra time to sprinkle your day with a few more smiles?There are SO many ways we can move forward in life without needing to make any heftytime commitments, and these changes will help us realize how easy it is to formnew habits and will also lead us to enjoy the many benefits these habits canbring to our lives!

Practice

Half Habits: For all the habits you intend on adopting, instead of focusing on thedestination (forming the new habit fully), think of the next step you can takein the direction of these habits and make a slight adjustment to adopting thesehabits

Timeless Habits: Come up with ways you can make simple changes towhat you eat, how you behave, etc. that can bring about positive results in yourlife, without needing to free up any time on your schedule to form these newhabits”

What do you think? Can we learn new habits without even trying. It sounds like an oversimplification to me.